Study Finds That A 'Bad' Drug Trip Can Still Have Psychological Benefits

Trending News: A Bad Trip On Shrooms Might Not Be That Bad At All

Why Is This Important?

Because mental hardship is important for personal development. Also, a bad trip is still a trip.

Long Story Short

Researchers have found that a bad hallucinogenic trip isn’t always entirely bad, with 76 percent of drug users saying they benefited psychologically from the difficult situation.

Long Story

Chances are, if you haven’t had a bad trip yourself you probably know someone who has, or at least know someone who knows someone. And the stories aren’t pretty: basically, imagine Event Horizon in your house.

But new research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology suggests that, despite bad trips being one of the most psychologically difficult moments of their lives, most drug users still talk about benefitting from the experience.

The counterintuitive findings centred on psilocybin-containing mushrooms (also known as magic mushrooms), powerful psychedelics that can profoundly alter your perceptions. The issue with shrooms, as they’re often called, is that the effects are not consistent from one person to the next, and while some people experience bliss, others descend into the dreaded “bad trip."

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The JoP-published research was led by Roland Griffiths of John Hopkins University, and surveyed close to 2,000 adults regarding their single worst experience after ingesting magic mushrooms. Unsurprisingly, 62% said their bad trip was one of the most psychologically difficult experiences of their lives, with 11% saying it was in fact the most difficult thing they ever had to go through.

But 76 percent also said the bad trip had resulted in an improved sense of personal well-being or satisfaction, with 34% rating it as one of their most meaningful experiences of their life, and another 31% describing it as spiritually significant.

If this sounds like fanciful reflection, almost half of the bad trippers said they were so at peace with the whole thing that they’d be willing to do it all again. And the intensity of psychological experience was positively associated with beneficial outcomes, although this tended to be the case with shorter trips, not longer ones.

They’re surprising results, and not just in terms of talking about the potential positive effects of drug use, but also the potential positive effects of any kind of gruelling psychological hardship.

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There are caveats, though. Firstly, researchers have pointed out that their sample was recruited via psychedelic-focused online forums and social networking sites, where views of the drug generally tend to be favourable (although the study’s focus on negative experiences likely overestimated the frequency of severe consequences).

Also, bad trips can seem very real, and as such can have severe consequences. 11% of participants in the study said the bad trip had put themselves or others at risk of physical harm, while 2.6% said longer trips had caused them to behave in an aggressive or violent way.

So think twice (thrice) before trying this at home… in the presence of loved ones who will hold you close if things go pear-shaped.